Friday, January 17, 2014

The waiting is the hardest part....

Tom Petty sure got that right! I have a redemption story that started nearly a year ago... So pour a glass of port, stoke the fire and settle down for a tale. While the story isn't over yet, it will be soon! Upper Deck promises..

So as I mentioned in the past I have a few buyers I always watch. One reason is they are just awesome and have been good to me in the past and secondly they have cool stuff up for auction or BIN all the time. One seller who is practically in my backyard posted almost a year ago a redemption for a 12-13 Artifacts Dino Cicceralli Black Auto /5. How could is that! A HOF auto (which I need), numbered to 5 and Artifacts Black cards always look amazing.

Just picture this card, minus the game used pieces and a sticker auto instead. It would have been AWESOME.

The problem is, the seller who posted it actually sells for other people too. So, the price sometimes isn't picked by him and that was the case. Starting bid was 40 dollars which was far steeper than I would ever pay, mostly because I am cheap. However, it didn't sell. It was re-posted a few times with a BIN or Best offer of 40 dollars. Clearly there is a pattern where someone wants 40 bucks minimum for the card. Best offer are my favourite two words so I send him an offer of 20 bucks. It was a perfect price in my opinion, HOF auto, rare but still a sticker auto which deters some of the purists out there. Dave was kind and wrote back that he couldn't do that price right now but thanked me for the offer. So I waited and more time went by with no sale. Then the day came where it was re-posted for auction and starting bid was 19.99. I said BAM, here is a bid and I went a little over 20 just in case someone wanted to sneak it away for 50 cents more than my supposed top. However, luck would have it no one touched it and it was mine for 20 bucks. Three months or so later after first seeing it, it was mine! I was excited because this card was going to be cool!

Then the months tick by, I check periodically on the website for a status update and each time I am told the "athlete is committed to signing". However, after about 6 months I begin to wonder if I am ever going to see the card I was very excited to receive. Getting worries that I would just randomly receive some strange card in the mail so I contacted Upper Deck and asked them how long do they wait before they give up on their autographs and the answer I received was the very informative "it depends" which is good and bad. Good because there is no set in stone timeline, but bad because it doesn't help me much. True I could just request a new card because 6 months is more than a long enough time to wait but I really wanted my Dino! Well luck or fate would have it a week later I was told in my status checks that the "card was not produced" and I had to contact customer service.

So knowing what they were going to ask I prepared myself a list of acceptable players and teams ready to answer whatever questions they had and sure enough I had to give 4 players and a team. So I said:

Stamkos
Ovechkin
John Tavares
P. Kane
Brodeur
and the Edmonton Oilers

I picked mostly guys I collect or don't have much of in the way of autos. I added the Oilers because Eberle is on the team as well as many young players I wouldn't mind picking up autos for.

So now the new waiting game begins, I have been informed recently my card is pulled and packed for shipping so I suspect in the next 2 weeks to have my replacement, but until then...The waiting continues.